It’s Screener Season! (La La Land & Arrival)

It’s screener season in Hollywood and that means I get to watch movies without paying for them!

La La Land

What is it?

A musical about the ambitions of Hollywood denizens.

Who’s it for?

Anyone with a hankering for “expressing their art”.

La La Land is a charming little film that was absolutely made for Hollywood wannabes. The movie is good, but it would be a lot better if 30 minutes were chopped off the run time. The musical interludes feature amateur singing and pared-down sets and lighting. Most of the locales and the characters in La La Land reside in the shadow of grander ambitions. It’s a movie about people who want to make it big, but haven’t gotten there yet. There’s a nice symmetry to the characters and the pedestrian surroundings where their musical numbers are staged.

Arrival

What is it?

Aliens arrive on Earth. What are they saying to us?

Who’s it for?

Linguists and people who READ science-fiction.

I’m biased because I like science-fiction and I like to think. I’ll give Arrival a so-so rating. It starts well, has fascinating ideas and ends in a way that was not very believable and is likely incomprehensible to the average viewer. So what’s good? Well it IS a sci-fi film, unlike most Hollywood laser-tag outings. It requires thinking and it has very little action. It’s basically about how language shapes us. If that statement interests you, then you will be motivated to realize the deeper philosophical message here about life and loss. If you don’t care about language and its affect on our thought process or aliens then you won’t make it that far.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the page above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”